Future Generations (TheMaster197)
The Missionary Generation (born 1860–1884) became the indulged home-and-hearth children of the post-Civil War era. They came of age as labor anarchists, campus rioters—and ambitious first graduates of black and women’s colleges. Their young adults pursued rural populism, settlement house work, missionary crusades, “muckrake” journalism, and women’s suffrage. In midlife, their Decency brigades and “fundamentalists” imposed Prohibition, cracked down on immigration, and organized Vice Squads. In the 1930s and ‘40s, their elder elite became the “Wise Old Men” who enacted a “New Deal” (and Social Security) for the benefit of youth, led the global war against fascism, and reaffirmed America’s highest ideals during a transformative era in world history. * AMERICAN: Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Herbert Hoover, W.E.B. DuBois, William Jennings Bryan, Upton Sinclair, Jane Addams, Douglas MacArthur * FOREIGN: Winston Churchill, V.I. Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Tsar Alexander II, Clement Attlee The Lost Generation (born 1885–1903) grew up amidst urban blight, unregulated drug use, child “sweat shops,” and massive immigration. Their independent, streetwise attitude lent them a “bad kid” reputation. After coming of age as “flaming youth,” doughboys, and flappers, they were alienated by a war whose homecoming turned sour. Their young-adult novelists, barnstormers, gangsters, sports stars, and film celebrities gave the roar to the ‘20s. The Great Depression hit them in midlife, at the peak of their careers. With their pugnacious battlefield and homefront managers of a hot war—and their frugal and straight-talking leaders of a new “cold” one. As elders, they paid high tax rates to support their world-conquering juniors, while asking little for themselves. * AMERICAN: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Irving Berlin, George Patton, Mae West, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Chaplin, Babe Ruth, Buster Keaton, Alfred Hitchcock * FOREIGN: Adolph Hitler, Mao Zedong, Nikita Khrushchev, Charles DeGualle, King George VI The G.I. Generation (born 1904–1924) developed a “good kid” reputation as the beneficiaries of new playgrounds, scouting clubs, vitamins, and child-labor restrictions. They came of age with the sharpest rise in schooling ever recorded. As young adults, their uniformed corps patiently endured depression and heroically conquered foreign enemies. In a midlife subsidized by the G.I. Bill, they built gleaming suburbs, invented miracle vaccines, built freeways, gleaming airports, launched the world into the jet age, plugged “missile gaps,” and launched moon rockets. Their unprecedented grip on the Presidency began with a New Frontier, a Great Society, and Model Cities, but wore down through Vietnam, Watergate, deficits, and problems with “the vision thing.” As “senior citizens,” they moved into busy Sun City communities safeguarded their own “entitlements,” but have had little influence over culture and values. * Famous Americans: John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Judy Garland, John Wayne, Walter Cronkite, Sam Walton, Glenn Ford, * Famous Foreigners: Willy Brandt, Leonid Brezhnev, Park Chung-hee, Deng Xiaoping, Harold Wilson, Lee Kuan-yew, Suharto, Prince Philip The Silent Generation (born 1925–1945) grew up as the suffocated children of war and depression. They came of age just too late to be war heroes and just too early to be youthful free spirits. Instead, this early-marrying Lonely Crowd became the risk-averse technicians and professionals of a post-crisis era in which conformity seemed to be a sure ticket to success. Many found a voice as sensitive rock ‘n rollers and civil-rights advocates. Midlife was an anxious “passage” for a generation torn between stolid elders and passionate juniors. Their surge to power coincided with fragmenting families, cultural diversity, institutional indecision, and prolific litigation. They got married and started families younger than any other generation in US history and had the lowest youth misbehavior of any generation where the biggest complaints about them in high school were usually smoking in the bathrooms, chewing gum and passing notes in classh. As America’s most affluent-ever seniors (no longer “senior citizens”), they wondered why just “following the rules” no longer worked for their children and grandchildren and realized that times had changed beyond any recognition of their young adult years. They finally had their first president in 2020 with Bernie Sanders becoming the oldest President in US history. * Famous Americans: Bernie Sanders, Colin Powell, Clint Eastwood, Walter Mondale, Woody Allen, Martin Luther King, Jr., Warren Buffet, Larry Ellison, Elizabeth Taylor, Elvis Presley, George Carlin, Malcolm X * Famous Foreigners: Anne Frank, Rupert Murdoch, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Hu Jintao, Mikhail Gorbachev, Queen Elizabeth II, Jiang Zemin The Baby Boomer Generation (born 1946–1964) basked as children in Dr. Spock permissiveness, suburban conformism, Beaver Cleaver friendliness, and Father Knows Best complacency. From the Summer of Love to the Days of Rage, they came of age rebelling against the worldly blueprints of their parents. Even as they became self-indulgent in their lifestyles and confrontational to their elders they proclaimed themselves “flowerpower” arbiters of public morals, youth pathologies worsened—and SAT scores began a 17-yearslide, juvinile arrests and drug abuse skyrocketed to the highest levels in US history. In the early 1980s, many of the self-absorbed young adults became “yuppies” with mainstream careers and perfectionist lifestyles. In the late-1980s, they entered midlife and national power, trumpeting values and visions, touting a “politics of meaning,” and waging scorched-earth Culture Wars. Their financial success in the 80s and 90s combined with some self-indulgence led to a massive increase in the nation's consumer and personal debt. While their leadership was rather initially ineffective on the domestic front in the years of Clinton and Bush 43 they became much more effective and creative leaders during and after the 2008 Financial Crisis. Their net worth which was blighted by the Great Recession caused many of them to postpone “retirement”—and in the 2010s and 20s became many of the leaders who impeached Trump, reformed and modernized many government institutions, and helped pave the way for universal healthcare in the US. * Famous Americans: Bill & Hillary Clinton, George & Laura Bush, Barack & Michelle Obama, Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Cornel West, Jeff Bezos, Robin Williams, Quentin Tarantino, Michael Jordan, Steview Wonder, Elizabeth Warren * Famous Foreigners: Tony Blair, Moon Jae-in, Xi Jingping, Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel, Binyamin Netanyahu, Princess Di, King Charles III, Shinzo Abe Generation X (born 1965–1980) those who can remember the Challenger Explosion but not the Moon Landing, survived a “hurried” childhood of divorce, latch keys, open classrooms, devil-child movies, and a shift from G to R ratings. They came of age hearing themselves denounced as so wild and stupid as to put The Nation At Risk. As young adults, maneuvering through a sexual battlescape of AIDS and blighted courtship rituals—they have dated and married cautiously. In jobs, they embraced risk and preferred free agency over loyal corporatism. From grunge to hip-hop, their splintered culture revealed a hardened and cynical edge. Politically, they have leaned toward pragmatism and non-affiliation, and would rather volunteer than vote. When the dot-com bubble popped in 2000 and the 2008 financial crisis hit in their prime career establishing years whatever wealth and corporate power they had accumulated was blighted. In their midlife battered by economic hardship, they began to ascend into political and corporate leadership roles feeling less like hailed winners than like resilient survivors, seeking out safe harbors for the sake of themselves and their families. They had the unique distinction of being the first generation to end up experiencing lower salaries, rates of home ownership and wealth accumulation than their parents. The housing bubble priced them out of home ownership in their prime first-time home buying years, only for the bubble to burst right as they were becoming first time owners. Transitioning to the strategic, straight-talking strategic reforming leaders who did what they had to in order to ensure the future survival of their nations. In their elder years they became tough, content old men and women who didn't tolerate much complaining, paid their taxes diligently without saying a word to support their juniors endeavors in world building and became the first generation in US history to never hold a majority of Congress nor have a single US President. * Famous Americans: Larry Page, Elon Musk, Cory Gardner, Paul Ryan, Robert Downey Jr, Tom Brady, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, Drew Brees, Seth MacFarlane, Ted Cruz * Famous Foreigners: Vicky Foxcroft, David Cameron, Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron, Dimitry Medvedev, Lu Hao The Millennial Generation (born 1981–1999) those who can remember the turbulent events of the 2000s either 9/11, the financial crisis or Katrina but not the Challenger Explosion; first arrived amid “Babies on Board” signs, when abortion and divorce rates ebbed, the popular culture recast babies as special, and hands-off parental styles were replaced by Lamaze and attachment-parenting obsessiveness. Child abuse and child safety became hot topics, while books teaching virtues, values, and team-playing citizenship became best-sellers. As Millennials began reaching their teens in the late 1990s, youth volunteering and community service surged—while teen rates of drinking, smoking, juvenile delinquency and violent crime declined steeply. As they began entering the workforce in the early 2000s, cutting-edge employers implemented safety, feedback, mentorship, and career advancement programs in order to retain their best and brightest. Facing financial and economic hardship as young adults they lived with or near their parents in record numbers, while maintaining high hopes for their future in the face of record-high youth, underemployment and student debt as they ended up with the largest share of young mayors in US history. As they went on into midlife they focused all their political efforts on securing a better future by reinvesting into a modernized public transit system, guaranteed income schemes for those who weren't able to find work or provide enough for a standard living, built up industries in drought resistant crops, in vitro meats to prevent famines from climate change, launched the first humans to mars and helped end the fossil fuel industry and get the Earth connected by nuclear fusion and alternative energies. Their unprecedented grip on the Presidency began with a renewed space race and exploration this time between China and the USA, environmental repair projects, national debt forgiveness, intelligent cities, universal basic income but ended with AIGate, vision problems, and the morality about human augmentation and the increasingly outdated concept of national currency. As elders they chaffed on the youth rebelling about technological progress, and overreaching government about all the focus on the future. They moved into Ecology based retirement communities. They had massive revolutionary influence over politics and world affairs but didn't do very much on the cultural front. * Famous Americans: Pete Buttigieg, Conor Lamb, Elise Stefanik, Malia Turner-Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, LeBron James, Miranda Cosgrove, Michelle Wie, Miley Cyrus, Christopher Paolini * Famous Foreigners: King William V, Cat Smith, Tie Feiyan, Kim Jong-un, Anton Shipulin Generation Z (born 2000-2020) comprise the oldest humans who will never recall any year of rampant consumer culture before the catastrophic global financial meltdown of 2008—nor any national leader before the election of America’s first African-American President, or America's first Jewish leader and first female Vice President. As post-9/11 infants growing up in the shadow of the America’s Middle-Eastern wars and the new U.S. Department of Homeland Security, they mostly believe that the purpose of government is to “keep us safe.” Carefully raised by overprotective, hands-on Gen-X parents, who don’t dare let their own kids take the same risks they themselves took, Gen-Zers literally spent more time “at home” (with their multiple digital platforms) than any earlier child generation in history. Elementary schools are introduced new behavioral regimens to forge these kids into sensitive, helpful, rule-playing youngsters. Many teachers complimented them on how polite and helpful they were to their elders especially Gen-Xers and Boomers and how the biggest complaints about them in high school was smart phone communications in class or vaping in the bathrooms. They mostly came of age with record low youth crime and juvenile arrest rates, yet had the highest rates of mental health issues in US history. Their midlife was torn between powerful elders and rebellious, opinionated juniors and increasing political unrest as market capitalism was starting to lose influence as the culture was rapidly moving away from consumption to resource smartness. As parents they were less cautious and restraining parenting style and free-range parenting. Their elder years were marked by human augmentation leading to much longer and healthier lives latter in life and massive decreases in healthcare costs. * Famous Americans: Dane Hammond, Sasha Johnson-Obama, * Famous Foreigners: George-Prince of Wales Generation Alpha (born 2021-2040) became the happy spirited children who grew up without the constant cynical stream of dire news journalism that their Millennial parents did, and less overprotective overbearing parenting of their Gen-Z elders. They grew up in an era of increasing optimism for the future, parents who focused more on attaining a home-work balance in life, more civic future-focused schooling. They came of age rebelling against the world building, future focused all reaching government programs and ideas of their parents, the protesters of Corporate HQs, they built communes based on getting back in touch with humanist naturalist values, and conservation. As they're mostly approaching midlife by now they're mostly beginning to adopt space related careers, becoming more cautious as parents, and began more involved interactive classroom settings. In the mid-2060s, they entered midlife and national power, trumpeting values and visions, touting a “politics of enlightenment,” and waging scorched-earth Values Wars. The 'Solar Generation '(born 2041-2061) the free range kids of the 2050s, born at a time when the human population was beginning to peak and many people were questioning the meaning of having kids. The 'Designer Generation '(born 2062-?) Category:TheMaster197